Published in the Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 1, number 2 (1988) © Association for Bahá’í Studies 1988 Poetry and Self–Transformation Roger White Abstract Recognizing that the central figures of their Faith wrote poems, members of the Bahá’í community rightly honor poetry. Unlike non-Bahá’í artists who may feel unappreciated and estranged from society because they have no shared view of the universe and whose poetry may become increasingly obscure, private, and difficult, the Bahá’í who writes poems enjoys a sense of family with an international audience made up of people who hold similar spiritual values and aspirations, and the Bahá’í poet can joyfully restate the eternal themes traditionally addressed in poetry, taking care to avoid imitating the Sacred Texts. In the process of engaging in this craft, the Bahá’í poet will be performing an act of worship which should not only transform the writer but also hold before readers the possibility of their being transformed too. White’s poem, “Rescue,” is cited to illustrate the point that transformation must originate from within the individual. Résumé Sachant que les figures centrales de leur foi ont écrit des poèmes, les membres de la communaute bahá’íe honorent, à juste titre, la poésie. Contrairement aux artistes non-bahá’ís, qui peuvent se sentir non appréciés et aliénés de la société parce qu’ils ne partagent pas les mêmes vues de l’univers, et dont la poésie peut devenir de plus en plus obscure, intérieure et difficile, l’artiste bahá’í qui écrit des poèmes se sent “en famille” au sein d’un auditoire international composé de personnes qui ont les mêmes aspirations et valeurs spirituelles que lui. Ainsi le poète bahá’í peut joyeusement énoncer à nouveau les thèmes éternels traditionnellement abordés dans la poésie, en prenant soin toutefois d’éviter d’imiter les textes sacrés. Alors qu’il est occupé à accomplir son métier, le poète bahá’í est engagé dans un acte d’adoration qui devrait non seulement transformer l’écrivain mais donner la possibilité aux lecteurs d’être egalement transformés. Le poeme de White, “Rescue” [Délivrance], est donné en exemple pour illustrer le fait que la transformation doit prendre son origine à l’intérieur de l’individu. Resumen Reconociendo que las figuras centrales de su fe escribieron poemas, los miembros de la comunidad Bahá’í rinden honor a la poesía. A diferencia de los artistas no Bahá’ís, que pueden sentirse menospreciados y alienados de la sociedad porque no tienen una visión en común del universo y cuya poesía se vuelve más y más obscura, personal y difícil, el Bahá’í que escribe poemas disfruta de un sentido de familia con un público internacional que se compone de personas que tienen valores y aspiraciones espirituales similares, y el poeta/la poetisa Bahá’í puede gozosamente reiterar los temas eternos tradicionalmente presentados en la poesía, teniendo cuidado de no imitar los Textos Sagrados. En el proceso de ocuparse en este arte, el poeta/la poetisa Bahá’í estará realizando un acto de veneración que no sólo debe transformar al escritor/la escritora sino que también pone ante el lector/la lectora la posibilidad de ser transformado también. E1 poema de White “Rescue” (“Rescate”) está citado para illustrar el punto que la transformación debe originarse de dentro de la persona. y non-Bahá’í friends who are poets frequently complain that among friends and members of their families M to whom they show their work they encounter indifference, contempt, embarrassment, or sometimes hostility, which heightens their sense of alienation and uselessness. They are made to feel frivolous and somewhat less than respectable. They have no experience of audience and feel that they are writing in a void, speaking to themselves in a vacuum, presenting their private view of the world with no confidence that anyone else might see the world as they do. Poetry is no longer very accessible to the average reader; it is rare to find families and groups of friends gathering together to read poetry; it is increasingly seen as a specialized and elitist interest divorced from real life, and few consider it a source of pleasure and insight. Poetry is still written and read, of course, but it has taken refuge in universities, creative writing workshops, and obscure coffeehouses. Seldom is it recognized as a vital means of communicating information of a kind that is found only in poems—bulletins from the unconscious, “those sly reports on private experience, voices of the inner self...” as Louise Bernikow has remarked (World Split 4). Poets are in part to blame for the diminished regard in which poetry is held that results in society’s impoverishment and deprives the poet of an audience. Without a common world perspective, poets are forced to delve into their own psyches with the result that much modem poetry is despairing or seemingly deliberately difficult—one might say written in a private code. Many modern poets who write confessional verse invite us charmlessly to follow them not only into the bedroom but also the bathroom, and might dismiss our reluctance to do so as squeamishness, not noticing our yawns. Poetry that celebrates natural speech and activity can make unnatural demands on our sympathy and psychic fastidiousness. In an age of instant gratification a consumer society seeks consumer-oriented entertainments; we have perhaps deserved the disposable poems and novels we are given in such abundance, thirst as we might for literature that affirms life and identity, and reinforces our humanity in its struggle to resist the assault of all that is mechanistic and robotic. It remains the task of poetry to translate into words, with intensity and economy, the inexpressible with an immediacy that is not achieved in other art forms. The poet must not just describe the loaf but provide readers with the experience of eating it; the poet places the bread on the tongue. When the poet fails in this duty, readers will turn to films and novels for the kind of information about life that it is the poet’s responsibility and privilege to provide. Poets learn to live with the disquieting knowledge that more people aspire to write poetry than read it, and that more read it than buy it. This situation, it might be supposed, will gradually change in a Bahá’í society whose members are trained not to confuse who they are with what they do; who accept the necessity of inhabiting a social persona without having it overshadow the soul within that stands naked before its Creator; and whose interior lives are privately called into account each day, not morbidly, but in a spirit of creative self- interest that fosters growth towards fuller human development. If the best poets are indeed, as has been said of them, the antennae of civilization, we might do well to consult them. Their wisdom, Inder Nath Kher insists, “cannot be translated into discursive prose” (Landscape). One of the highest services they perform is to reacquaint us with our true feelings which we put away in our need to manipulate our workaday world. But if we are correct in respecting poets as servants, we err in demanding that they be slaves to or propagandists of our view of reality. Very fine poetry has been created by poets writing both within and without a religious framework. It is chastening for the Bahá’í poet rising rapturously from devotions, and bent on “committing literature” (I accept blame for the phrase) by enshrining pious thoughts in poems, to recall T. S. Eliot’s admonition that people who write devotional verse are usually writing as they want to feel, rather than as they do feel. Many serious poets and other artists feel that they are at war with the age. Through this estrangement, both the poet and potential readers are the losers. Most of us have forgotten our discovery of poetry as children through nursery rhymes when we were fascinated to learn that words dance and resonate and have the capacity to provide the epiphanic moment, to transport, to express something we didn’t know how to say, to reveal something we didn’t know we knew. If the writer has done a valid job, the act of writing a poem has changed the writer, and we in reading it are put in touch with a power that transforms us—if only by reminding us that transformation is possible. This is what we look for in art. Cyril Connolly would have it that, “The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece... no other task is of any consequence... writers engaged in any literary task which is not an assault on perfection... might as well be peeling potatoes” (Unquiet 1). Carol Sternhell, writing in the New York Times, relates how her friend, Michael, aged two, tried to climb inside a book. “Unwilling to believe that so wonderful a world [as described in the story he had heard read to him] was unreachable, he simply opened the tale to his favorite page, carefully arranged his choice on the floor and stepped in. He tried again and again, certain he would soon get it right, and each time he was left standing out in the cold he cried in bewilderment.” Few of us are as innocent as Michael: we take revenge on the authors by refusing to read them, study them with calculation in order to expose their tricks, or withdraw from magic transport to take refuge in reading what we fondly believe are facts, revered because so manipulable. Most newspapers, how-to manuals, and interoffice memos have the virtue of being written in mind-numbing, heavisome prose.